Washington, DC – “The notion that you can have a clean, neat surgical war in which only the bad people will be hurt and nobody else will be touched is a dangerous illusion,” said Professor Amitai Etzioni at the Woodrow Wilson Center last Tuesday. Therefore, the US “should avoid war by all means,” Etzioni argued.
Etzioni was joined by Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations and Dr. Robert Litwak of the Woodrow Wilson Center, who agreed that diplomatic and sanctions strategies are the best viable option for the United States in its approach towards Iran. Although Etzioni said that the military option should not be taken off the table, he suggested sanctions as the best policy approach. “Sanctions are supposed to inflict pain on the other country, ideally on the elites and not on the people… to make them change behavior,” he said, conceding that sanctions often do affect the people as well.
Takeyh noted that containment, military force, and diplomacy are not separate entities. “In reality,” he said, “they’re concentric and they’re all related. A containment policy… will entail an enormous degree of diplomacy. Namely, the two powers will have to embark on a course of regular and systematic dialogue. That’s diplomacy.”
